Smugglers' Ridge Hike

(click to access the Picasa album)

Basically you start up north at Pineapple Dam and hike 4.5km south along the ridge. During the first part you encounter some World War 2 defense trench and bunker ruins, which are really neat. They were put there by the British in the 30s to defend Hong Kong. Some of the defense trenches are named after British streets.


Further along you climb up to an amazing view of Tsuen Wan (an area of HK). You are probably about sixty stories up at this point.

And even further along the trail joins what is known as the "Monkey Trail," which is by Golden Hill. Along here there are tons of macaques. We even saw some jump into a pool of water and swim around!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE2ZPm6wK30

Afterwards all went out to a vegetarian restaurant called "Sino." They use soy to make fake meats such as duck, beef, chicken, shrimp, pork, etc. It's very realistic, but I opted for a mushroom-potato-tomato mixture instead.

A Less Exciting Update

Midterms have rolled around. Three next week, and then on the following Tuesday 31/3 I will be heading to Bangkok and Cambodia for break.

And since it's Thursday, it's go-out-and-try-a-new-restaurant day! I have a big list of vegetarian restaurants that I've been going to each Thursday. So far I have yet to be disappointed.

Been spending a lot of my free time planning the summer's backpacking. Thirty days seems like a long time, but it's nowhere near enough to do this country justice. I won't even be able to explore the western half. But, my Tour de China does take me by such scenic places as  Jiuzhaigou, Zhangjiajie (look familiar... it should if you've seen Avatar), as well as several major cities, and some more historic places. And I have a good excuse to come back, not having seen any of the western half.

Boracay, Philippines

I won't post any on here just because it's a lot more difficult than just syncing stuff to a web album, but I shall talk about the journey.

Woke up for a really early morning flight, headed to the Hong Kong airport to hop on our plane to Manila. All was uneventful. We knew we had a 1.5 hour layover (not very long) in Manila, so we'd have to be on top of things to make our flight. What we didn't know was that Manila airport is not all one facility. In fact, it is actually 3 separate facilities about a 20 minute cab ride apart from each other. We arrived in terminal 3 only to find out that we had to go to terminal 2 to catch our next plane to Caticlan. All 7 of us boarded a van and we started heading that way. Traffic in Manila is absolutely crazy. It didn't look like there was any order at all to the highway, just a bunch of cars competing for spots at intersections, maneuvering as best they could to pinch in between others. After about 10 minutes I got to wondering whether mine and Markus' flight was the same as the others', as we had booked separately. Checked my itinerary and found that, no, it was not; we had landed in the correct terminal and needed to head back to it in order to catch our flight (this was 40min til, check in typically ends at 15 til).

So we hopped out of the van, flagged down a taxi and ran across traffic to get to it. Luckily everyone in Philippines speaks very good english and is helpful. Also lucky the traffic going the other way wasn't bad. We managed to get to the airport, talked to security and they let us cut line and showed us the way to check in to get our tickets. After 2 more security checkpoints and loads of running, we finally got to our terminal just a couple minutes before boarding ended. The plane was a prop-plane, fairly good size. Flight was beautiful. Looking out into the blue sea and seeing all the islands was a very good introduction to the place.

As for the others, they found out upon arrival at the other terminal that they actually needed to stay at terminal 3. They missed their flight, had to rebook, catch a flight into Kalibo and take a cab to Caticlan. They showed up about 7 hours after us.

Anyway, we arrived at Caticlan airport, which was absolutely tiny. Security and everything was very relaxed there. Hopped on a tricycle (the cabs of the Philippines) to get on the ferry to Boracay. Riding a tricycle through town really gave you an idea of the living conditions of people in the area. It was worlds different than anything I'd seen before. To give you an idea, a "cab" ride ran 50 Philippine Pesos, which is about 1 US Dollar. The buildings were all open to the outside and looked very dinghy.

The ferry was really pretty and you could see across the water the island we were going to spend the weekend on. White sand beaches, palm trees, perfect blue water that you could see over 40' into, it was really phenomenal. Once we got to the beach we bumped into our other 3 friends who had arrived the day before. They showed us to the hotel, the Ocean Breeze Inn, which was nestled a good distance into a residential area past station 3 (the southernmost station on the island). We were greeted with juice and genuine friendliness by the staff. Settled in and headed out to explore the beach and check out a few bars by station 2, which is the main station and has the most stuff.

We spent most of the weekend walking the beach, exploring some local shops, fending off vendors, and trying new food. I developed a bit of an addiction to fresh squeezed pineapple juice. Everything was very inexpensive, you could get a meal for 70-100PHP, beer was 35PHP for a San Miguel (locally brewed) during happy hour.

The next day we all booked a sailboat to go island hopping and snorkeling. Total cost of the boat and snorkeling combined: 450PHP per person, plus an additional 200PHP for entrance to Crystal Cove, which had some really neat caves on it. At one point in time one of those persistent vendors was chasing us in a rowboat trying to sell us ice cream. A bit later we got to the snorkeling area. Unfortunately the water was really rough. Most of the people weren't able to make it back to the boat; I actually took off my snorkeling stuff because it was so difficult to use with the waves. It was really pretty, though, swimming among tiny jellyfish and other varieties of fish and coral. Got to Crystal Cove and checked out some caves before hopping back on the sailboat to enjoy the sunset at sea. Bit of barhopping that night once we got back, all in all a great day.

The next day we spent most of the day just lounging around the beach or swimming in the ocean. We were all pretty exhausted from the day/night before. Enjoyed our final sunset in paradise.

Headed out a few hours earlier than we should have the next morning just to avoid flight problems. Markus and I were able to catch an earlier plane so we didn't have to spend much time in Caticlan. The plane was absolutely tiny, a 19 seater open to the captain's cabin. It flew really low, good scenery the whole way. Everything was fairly uneventful all the way back to Hong Kong.

All in all I would gladly go back to Boracay. It was beautiful, the people were some of the friendliest I have ever met and the prices were really low across the board.